Bay Ridge Mother Stirs Street Safety Awakening at Brooklyn CB 10

Maureen Landers was walking to pick up her son Max from P.S. 127 in Bay Ridge last April when she was struck by a motorist turning onto Fourth Avenue. Her stroller — thankfully empty — was flattened. She was rushed to the hospital but did not sustain major injuries. As for the driver, he didn’t even receive a ticket.

For many Bay Ridge parents and children, walking to school means crossing some of the most dangerous intersections in the neighborhood. Map of pedestrian and cyclist crashes: CrashStat.

Afterward, Landers started talking about the crash with her neighbors. As parent after parent shared their personal stories about car crashes, it became clear that they didn’t feel safe walking on their own streets.

Wednesday night, Landers and the other parents who have rallied around street safety presented their concerns to the traffic and transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 10. Parents "like living here, but they live in fear of the cars," she told the committee.

The CB was ready to listen. Just this past Sunday, 37-year-old Natalie Assee was killed crossing Fort Hamilton Parkway. In January, all of New York heard the story of 104-year-old Joe Rollino, the World’s Strongest Man, killed as he crossed Bay Ridge Parkway. One committee member’s grandmother was recently killed by a car in the neighborhood. Everyone in the room was perfectly aware that the neighborhood has a safety problem.

Maureen Landers and her kids, Max and Leila.

"We all know that our streets are more dangerous than they should be," said Doris Cruz, the transportation committee chair. Until Landers began her activism, however, each crash had been addressed separately. "We’ve just always seen it in isolation," said Cruz. She opened the meeting by calling for a comprehensive approach to pedestrian safety.

The discussion focused first on enforcement. While a police officer in attendance said the 68th precinct didn’t have the capacity to increase traffic enforcement, residents and CB members didn’t take "No" for an answer. One resident, Jean Solomon, proposed targeted crackdowns at the worst intersections. "Bay Ridge is the Wild West," she said, "we need to change its reputation." One CB member proposed a "Crosswalk Day" targeted at failure-to-yield violations, modeled on NYPD’s periodic crackdowns on distracted drivers.

When the committee moved on to potential engineering solutions, everything was on the table. They weighed the merits of more stop signs and traffic signals, leading pedestrian intervals, neckdowns, and other traffic calming treatments. At one point someone passed around a link to DOT’s Street Design Manual with instructions to look at the traffic calming section. The committee also decided to approach local business improvement districts about sponsoring pedestrian improvements.

The discussion wrapped up with a unanimous vote to form a pedestrian safety subcommittee and start observing street conditions immediately. CB members want to see specific implementation strategies follow from their data, which they plan to present to both DOT and Transportation Alternatives.

This is a first for the community board. "Traffic, as it applies to people and not just cars, has never been addressed before," said Cruz. She doesn’t expect to encounter resistance when she brings the committee’s initial ideas to the full board.

Safer streets in Bay Ridge are "clearly needed," said a spokesperson for Vincent Gentile, the local City Council representative. Gentile, who has historically made motorist convenience a top priority — often at the expense of pedestrians — would be open to any safety improvements, the spokesperson said.

Of course, it’s easy to support pedestrian safety before the specific solutions come into focus. There’s always the chance that the current consensus will fracture if parking spaces are threatened. Calls for extensive enforcement and innovative safety treatments from the Street Design Manual might get watered down to a request for a new stop sign.

But thanks to committed advocates like Maureen Landers, the community board is ready to act, and electeds are now more aware of the magnitude of the problem. For perhaps the first time, there is a gathering grassroots campaign for safer streets in southwest Brooklyn.

recently commuted by bike for a couple of months from 9th St to 92nd St along 5th ave to bay ridge, brooklyn.

on the return evening trip kind of amazing the amount of double-parking often with backing up and u-turns. totally unreal.

a single police officer walking 5th ave daily simply advising drivers to obey the laws would accomplish a lot. wouldn’t even have to give out tickets. wouldn’t be much a political issue and would likely greatly improve safety.

by bike in the morning it would take about 30 minutes.

by bike in the evening it would take about 40 minutes because of all the cars.

and, drivers still feel highly frustrated with a single bicycle in front and a street otherwise filled with cars.

it is difficult to believe that NY DoT is not considering protected bicycle lanes in each direction on 4th and even 3rd avenues — with a modest amount of public pedestrian space — all from bay ridge to downtown brooklyn which would greatly calm down the area and improve safety even more.

since the area seems to be greatly underserved by transit a public bicycle system could be created say, along 4th-avenue-only with connections to the many systems in downtown brooklyn and proposed developments.

since these are protected bikeways with a certain amount of inherent safety, recumbent and semi-recumbent tricycles with electric assists might be employed with all sorts of public outreach to attract people who would not consider trying the system or otherwise be uncomfortable on conventional upright bicycles.

MamaChilita

i’m grateful for the efforts of ms landers and other bay ridge residents for finally speaking up about traffic in this neighborhood. fingers crossed that the cb10 will finally act responsibly and approve the proposed changes. police enforcement is also sorely lacking.

Elevated from today’s headline stack: The Brooklyn Paper has a recap of DOT’s presentation to the Fourth Avenue Task Force last week, outlining options for the major avenue in Bay Ridge. The changes include a left-turn lane at 75th Street, a concrete pedestrian island at 86th Street, and a road diet along 13 blocks that would replace […]

Streetsblog caught up with council members Tish James and Brad Lander for a few minutes at Saturday’s “Building Bridges Bike Day” in Grand Army Plaza. James and Lander represent districts with some of the highest bicycling rates in the city, and they’re getting some mileage out of the local bike infrastructure themselves: Lander arrived via bike, […]

Update: The Home Reporter reports that the elderly victim of this crash has died. Residents of Bay Ridge are again calling for measures to rein in reckless motorists after a Tuesday crash that sent at least one pedestrian to the hospital. The crash occurred in the district of State Senator Marty Golden, who has blocked […]

Fourth Avenue is far and away the most viable potential bike route linking Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, and Park Slope, but it's still scary to ride on, with no designated space for cycling. At 4.5 miles long, a protected bike lane would make the reconstructed Fourth Avenue one of the most important two-way streets for bicycle travel in the city, connecting dense residential neighborhoods to jobs and schools.